OPINION: If you are a violent protester you are just as bad as the police officer who killed Floyd

What's disingenuous is ignoring every single example that I give of how a disadvantage is exponentially compounded by systemic issues, the lack of systemic solutions, and the limitations of personal accountability. Instead of harping on about "You can't grow a new arm!", how about actually giving an example of how personal accountability can overcome the issues that I described without leaving said person still disadvantaged in some way? THAT would go a long way toward addressing the point that I was making.

And trying to put crime entirely on personal choices? That doesn't just ignore the things I said, it ignores the things you yourself have already said. What happened to the big difference between stealing shoes because you want 'em and stealing food because you're hungry? Why not just make the life choice to starve to death instead then? Apparently they made the life choice not to have any food already, so it's all their fault really. I guess no one on the planet ever goes hungry due to circumstances outside of their control. No such thing as drought, or blight, or people who horde food, or the like. And hey, what about a person who had food stolen away from them? I guess they'll be fine because they must've made the life choice to have their food taken away.

And now choice to join a gang or not, eh? Never mind the fact the neighbor kid that doesn't join then becomes more likely to be a victim of the local gang, I suppose, or that he won't get any kind of protection from the local gang if a rival gang rolls in and decides he must be part of the local gang just because he's in the same area. He and his family can try to move out of the area, but whoops, what if they made the life choice to be part of the 24% of blacks under the poverty line and therefore can't afford to move somewhere safer? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

"You're just coming up with problems instead of seeing solutions!" is often the reply I get at this point in the argument, which is completely untrue. For one, I have usually at this point already given several potential solutions to the problem, exactly as I have this time. And for another, the big problem with extreme reliance on personal accountability and demanding that others do the same is that said position generally proposes solutions that IGNORES the surrounding problems in the situation. Pretending there are no surrounding problems only makes those problems worse and makes your individual accountability solutions less effective, entirely ineffective, or actively harmful. "If you believe the system makes it impossible" is completely missing the point of whether or not the system is actually making it impossible, a question that HAS to be asked before a person's personal accountability is blamed and/or personal accountability solutions can effectively be implemented.

The cops beating up folks during the protests are not facing consequences. Hell, all the cops that kicked this off are only just now starting to face anything resembling a consequence, and it's only due to the pressure being applied by the protests. And this is exactly what I'm talking about, that the system is both enabling these cops to apply undue violence AND working to protect them from repercussions.

As for you seeing lots of white people getting beaten in the videos, it's possible there is more of that going on, maybe not. I haven't done a digital headcount or anything myself. But if it is indeed the case, it does make sense. For one, remember the whole thing about there being far more whites in this country than blacks, and fortunately many whites believe as I do in helping out their black neighbors, friends, and family members in this. So it's very likely that they have a sizable presence in the protests.

For another, funny thing is that when white men have recently staged protests, many of them openly carrying rifles, other such weapons, and nazi flags, the cops stayed back then, giving them space to do their disgusting thing. I'd dig up a few links about it if you missed it, but unfortunately they're currently buried under a whole bunch of links about white men with guns hanging out during the CURRENT protests. White people bearing weapons and/or shouting nazi slogans? Everything goes smooth as glass. Unarmed black and white people protesting police brutality against black people? Batons and tear gas and rubber bullets. And when those protestors don't actually give them a reason for it? Well, as the videos I linked clearly show, they'll either make one up or not bother giving any reason at all. They just escalate.

Is the deciding factor in how they've treated these two groups of peaceful protestors that one was advocating for white people while the other is advocating for black people? I mean, the mounting evidence does seem to suggest prooooobably! And as a result, the white protestors end up taking their share of the damage too.

Anyway, back to where you continue to ignore things I've said. Specifically, the extra weight given to the "statistical outlier" of cops killing black people due to the extreme power disparity between the two groups. Any argument you might make against this being an important topic HAS to address that disparity or it is completely missing the point.

The whole reason "all lives matter" is an inappropriate response to these kinds of situations is that it tries to equalize two inherently unequal positions. Here, look, if you want simple, then let me try to boil it down to a simple thought experiment.

Person A is getting beaten with a weapon by someone wearing armor. Person B is not getting beaten at all. Person C yells "We have to help Person A!"

How exactly would telling Person C that "all people matter" help the situation? How exactly would saying "all people matter" be an appropriate response to the problem? And finally, how exactly would anyone saying "We have to help Person A!" in any way devalue Person B? Or any other person, for that matter?

Next, hey hey, now instead of ignoring what I'm saying to you, you're accusing me of saying things I never said. At what point did I claim that you do not have black sisters? Please point it out to me. In the meantime I will point out that what I DID say was that trying to pull out the "some of my best friends are black" card is racist. And it absolutely is. Knowing black people personally is not an argument. They are not props for you to use to score points. They are not automatically right just because they are black. They do not represent every single black person on the planet. Knowing them does not automatically make you not a racist. Showing me pictures or video of them or even coming to my front door to show them off in person only proves that they exist, not that they, or you, are actually correct in any way. Trying to use them as a tool in this way is thus both racist and completely irrelevant to the topic as it does not alter the data in any statistically significant way, if at all. I believe you just fine about having black half-sisters and a black stepfather. But it doesn't change anything either way.

I mean, what exactly did you expect my response to be? "Oh, well, you know some black people so I guess me and everyone else - including all the other black people that disagree with them - must be wrong, sorry about that!"? What credibility, exactly, is it supposed to lend to you or your arguments? Would that credibility be canceled out if I then called up three black people I know, ask them their opinions, and then let you know that they agree with me? What if you then got a fourth black person who agreed with you, tell me, how would that effect things?

What, in short, is your endgame with this display?

The whole reason I say that the National Review and its founder are bad sources is specifically because many of the things they have said and ideas they have pushed have commonly been demonstrably wrong. Same with Reagan, so quoting him doesn't really help your case any. Reagan was wrong, and not just about that. One of the biggest examples being the trickle-down theory that was one of the centerpieces of Reaganomics (and still used with depressing regularity today). After a temporary boost it shredded our economy and widened income inequality a horrendous amount because when the folks at the top get more money, the tendency is to keep it instead of trickling it anywhere they don't absolutely have to. And then there's the pointless wars and other conflicts, selling weapons to terrorist organizations, installing fascist dictators in other countries, so on and so forth, much of it driven by the advice and ideals of Buckley and his National Review. What good they did was completely overwhelmed by the bad.

So yeah, that's why I took the oh-so-extreme position of "take their opinions with a grain of salt".

Now, back to the misleading statistics thing, you yourself HAVE to be being obtuse at this point. What you posted regarding the 90%+ stat in your initial post was, in its entirety: "90+ percent of black people killed are killed by other black people. So to answer your question, no, this is completely bizar. I believe the media has an agenda to make it look like America is overrun by violent white people who are racist, and whenever there is a white cop who happens to kill another person who is black, the media goes wild. The same people don`t care about all of the other black people being killed every day."

You don't mention the raw numbers. You don't mention the percentage of white-on-white homicides. You do mention a lot of crime is committed by a small number of folks, but you don't address any of the reasons why this is and you don't show any real connection between that and the percentage. You do mention white-on-black violence, but don't mention the amount of black-on-white violence. You don't mention ANY of the other justifications you are now trying to lay out. You don't, in fact, make any attempt at all to give a reason as to why the state of affairs you mentioned is happening.

As a result, all you did do was tell us a lot of black people are killing each other and doing crime and how totally unfair it is that people are paying attention to how the people who are supposed to be protecting people's lives are instead snuffing them out. "Don't be so hard on cops that are murdering people, because black people BAD!" is not a good look, but it's exactly the one you put in your first post. You may not have realized that's what you were doing when you wrote it, but it is what you did, and continuing to try and justify or pretend it didn't happen after the fact is REALLY not a good look.

As for those current attempts at justification, they're all rehashes of things we've already covered, and you still have not satisfactorily addressed my points regarding them. Instead you want to say that I'm trying to justify crimes committed by black people when all I'm doing is giving the reasons and causes, which is a different thing. A serial killer's reason for murdering people might be that he believes they are agents of Satan, but just because he had a reason does not necessarily mean that his actions were justified.

Some of the crimes that black people commit due to their environment might be justifiable, like stealing food. Other crimes that they commit due to their environment might not be justifiable, like stealing a pair of sneakers. It's never going to be completely one or the other either way, and I am not and have not in any way attempted to make such judgement calls here. What I have done and will continue to do is point to the systemic factors that have placed them in an environment that rewards, does not adequately punish, is entirely indifferent to, and/or absolutely necessitates the theft of property.

And again, I am NOT taking personal accountability out of the equation, I am simply giving it the proper amount of weight in relation to the systemic issues involved. That weight simply happens to be far less than that of the systemic issues because they involve elements that are out of the scope of most if any individual's ability to overcome with personal accountability.

It's simply the way things work. Pre-American Civil War, there were black people who were freed by their masters and slaves that escaped from their masters to get to freedom. But there were other slaves that were physically unable to escape on their own. Others that could've gotten out themselves but weren't willing to leave behind friends and family members who couldn't also escape. Do you look down on these people? Think that they should have taken more personal responsibility to not be slaves? Think that changes to the system like the abolishment of slavery and the accompanying war shouldn't have taken place, and instead everyone should have just waited around for however long until the rest of the slaves finally chose to free themselves?

Yeah, this is an extreme example, but the mechanics behind the whole thing are exactly the same. Just like the institution of slavery was altered on a much more massive scale due to systemic solutions rather than individual efforts, so too can the problems of poverty and crime.

Back to the single parenthood thing, hoooooooly crap, I figure it is quite likely that you just don't know about just how crappy sex education is for everyone in the US as a whole. It is, in short, atrocious. In a little more detail, there is no overarching gameplan, leaving everything up to individual states so it's a complete crapshoot how good of an education you might get. About 2/3rds allow kids to opt out of some or all of the course. Just less than half teach about contraceptives. Less than half are even required to inform kids that getting teen pregnant is a bad thing. Most teach abstinence, with many of those stressing abstinence-only, which not only doesn't work, it actually makes teenage pregnancies rise. And most damning in my opinion? Only 1/3rd of them require that sex education be MEDICALLY ACCURATE! Is that not insane?

Our educational system overall is pretty awful to be honest. We are technically second best in the world, but that comes with a LOT of qualifiers. The main issue is very similar to the state of income equality in the US. We have some very high quality schools just like we have some extremely wealthy people, but the rest is either meh or entirely in the gutter. And surprise, surprise, white folk mostly end up in better, more expensive schools, while black folk are generally relegated to public schools, which are not all of equal value.

So, in general, black people tend to get a poorer education overall, and even if they were on an exact par with whites, there's still no telling if they would get a proper sex education. The numbers on teen pregnancies between blacks and white aren't really so bad comparatively, but I absolutely agree that they are still much higher than they ought to be. This isn't because they're all making a decision to have so many babies so young, however, because the fact is that too many of them either don't get a proper enough sex education to make any kind of an informed choice in the matter, or they're being taught WRONG.

Speaking of wrong information, let me explain again that the Mapping Police Violence website is one of the very few comprehensive sources for that information. There is no full and complete data on the trends that I've been able to find from official sources like the FBI, the police themselves obviously can't be trusted to provide entirely accurate information on such things even if they were willing to do so, and police brutality has a negative effect on people's willingness to report crimes of any kind. Reporting the police to the police isn't exactly productive, and many other law enforcement agencies are only just now starting to consider maybe they should look into the problem thanks to the current protests.

Because of all this, naturally it takes extra time to get all the data together to craft a full report, and yes, even that information is not going to be complete. Even then, 2017 or even 2015 is not in any way, shape or form "conveniently outdated". It was only three to five years ago. Data like that stays relevant for a long time, and again, this is one of the best if not THE best source for this information. So, y'know, if you have something that's newer and also as relevant and accurate, go ahead and cough it up. Until then, this is what we've got to work with.

Now, I gotta ask for some clarification on a couple of things, because for the life of me, I can't seem to find where you're seeing 'em. First would be the 41 unarmed (9 black) people killed in 2019. The other is the part about a cop being 18 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was to be killed by a cop. I mean, I don't doubt they might be there, I just seriously am not seeing them.

In the meantime, I do have issues regarding both of those things. First, regarding the decline of police brutality rates . . . who said there was no decline? I certainly didn't. I'm pretty sure the MPV site didn't. I even tried a word search here and I don't think anyone else in this thread said it either. Fact is that both police brutality AND crime in general have been in a slow decline over the past decade or two. So I'm with you on that, it's absolutely true. Like I said, I can't find the 41 number for some reason, but I don't doubt at all that might be the case because it does fit the general trend. This does not, however, mean that it can't swing back up at any time. In fact, if nothing else, the current protests are undoubtedly gonna spike 2020's numbers for both stats quite noticeably, even taking into account how the quarantine may have depressed them. And even if it didn't, the number of acceptable police brutality cases against anyone of any color is exactly ZERO. This is, once again, because of the power disparity involved and the fact that the police are the people we are supposed to trust to protect us from violence. If we can't trust them to do that, then we need an entirely new system.

The second statistic is a bit more problematic, unfortunately. Did you perhaps mean to say 18 times more likely to be killed by an UNARMED black male than an unarmed black male being killed by a cop? Because if you mean to include armed black males at the start but not include them at the end, then that's an extremely skewed comparison and might explain why I can't find that data on the site.

Anyway, I do hope you're able to provide the sources for that info . . . and perhaps the info regarding most of the people killed by cops in 2019 being armed and dangerous. Your assumptions regarding such aren't relevant to the discussion, after all.

Regardless, there are several ways to de-escalate the situation before the use of lethal force, even if the person involved is armed. Lots of cops in the US are not required to use them or find loopholes, and even when those ways are absolutely required and followed properly, they don't really work as well as they should a lot of the time. And if you really don't see an issue with trying to fearmonger by talking about the danger of an unarmed people versus cops with training, gear, and authority, then it's no wonder you're still struggling with the whole power disparity thing. I'm not saying they don't have a chance at all, but it's just really weird to talk about warning the lions that some of those Christians can be kinda wily.

Y'know, that website DOES kinda look like there are officers who are criminals that go around beating and killing people. Imagine that! It's almost like the data reflects the reality. Would you perhaps like to go back to the Twitter thread of police brutality videos for a refresher on just how true it is? I'm sure they've uploaded a lot more since you last checked it out.

Now, finally, debunking the claim that white cops target black men! I . . . um. Hmm. What? Who claimed anything about it being white cops? You, in fact, are the only one I can find that has specified their race, and I only realized you had after I followed your link and got immediately confused as to why you had put it in. I mean, maybe someone else has talked about the cops being white and I'm just missing it, but I certainly never said anything about it. All of my statements have been about any cops at all, whether they're targeting black people or otherwise. I don't actually have any idea what the exact data is about the races of the police officers involved. Not because I assumed they were all white, which I didn't, but because it's not a relevant statistic.

To begin with, I've already known for quite a long while that black and other cops are just as susceptible to racism as white cops. I've never read this particular study, but it's been reported on the news before, and I've seen it mentioned elsewhere on the 'net as well. And, well, I'm really not sure what your point was supposed to be here, because that study saying that minority suspects are disproportionately targeted by cops for police brutality regardless of the race of the cops involved is more proof that the racism issue is baked into the US law enforcement system, not simply a matter of individuals choosing to be racist.

And one more time, it's not about the cops as individuals, it's about the disparity of power that exists between them and their victims and the systemic issues that mold them. It doesn't matter if they're white. It doesn't matter if they're some other non-white color or even the exact same color as their victim. When a cop commits an unnecessarily violent act on a citizen, it is a BIG DEAL. And since they demonstrably and disproportionately target black people regardless of their own race, when a cop commits an unnecessarily violent act on a black citizen, it is a VERY BIG DEAL.